17 Jun The Science of Second Chances: What Brands Can Learn from Personal Reconciliation
The Challenge of Trust
“Operational continuity incident, a regrettable unplanned disruption, a desire to promote stakeholder trust.” There is a danger in crisis communications to cast a crisis and the resulting fallout through the lens of the corporation. A brand makes a colossal error to the detriment of its stakeholders and much of the discussion centres on the language and perspective not of those affected, but of the company and its operations.
Corporations are already difficult for people to conceptualize and therefore relate to. Much of the language used to communicate with the public exacerbates this by being too abstract to be relatable or too technical to be understood. Trust is something first and foremost that people do with other people.
Trust at the Human Level
This is why a recent systematic literature review of trust repair in romantic couples (Giacobbi, 2025) has so much to teach us. Re-examining how trust works in our most fundamental relationships reveals how trust actually works, and how brands can rebuild trust more effectively.
The study identifies five pillars of trust repair:
(1) Proactive transparency
(2) Active monitoring
(3) Remorse and accountability
(4) Shared activities
(5) clear communication of reasons for the betrayal
The 5 principles and how they apply to your brand:
- Proactive transparency: When a breakdown of trust occurs, leading with proactive transparency rather than empty, “trust us” reassurances is vital. A 2021 study on corporate crises showed that high transparency messaging in a crisis contributes positively to organizational credibility. The word transparency is used with abundance in corporate comms, but transparency isn’t binary, it’s a spectrum. I’ve seen brands include key information in the small print and claimed that they were transparent, but this is passive transparency. For stakeholders it’s barely transparency at all and it won’t help a brand rebuild trust after a crisis. Put the information most critical to your keyholders on your front page, not your foot notes. What information is critical? That which carries value and usually risk to the stakeholder.
- Active monitoring: this refers to the request by a betrayed individual for the right to monitor and observe behaviours over time. The principle in crisis comms that this implies is that transparency is not conveyed through a moment but through an accumulation of moments. Companies that want to rebuild trust will create proactive, ongoing accountability with disclosures that are live or at regular intervals. Instead of just announcing a plan to improve safety measures, a company can commit to third-party safety audits that will be available at regular intervals and accompanied by actions taken to address issues raised in those audits. Transparency requires a road map.
- Remorse and accountability. Don’t underestimate the importance of expressing remorse. A 2019 study on corporate crisis communication found that “An apology arouses empathy among stakeholders and subsequently increases reputation repair, unlike denial.” Acknowledging damage done in a crisis is important to stakeholders. It’s key to demonstrating that you understand the issue, have a motivation to make it better, and are connecting with the stakeholder point of view.
Case study: In 2024 Bumble, a dating app, found itself in hot water after a marketing campaign that poked fun at celibacy. Bumble responded swiftly on social media, “We made a mistake. Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a community frustrated by modern dating, we unintentionally did the opposite.” It went on to highlight the feedback they received and understand the perspectives of those affected, “Some of the perspectives we heard were…” and took action by donating the billboard space to organizations that support women. An example of an apology driven by empathy and showing they took the time to understand the harm caused in stakeholders own words.
- Shared activities: In couple contexts this means carrying on the relationship and avoiding the tendency to withdraw. For companies this means don’t disappear. Keep interacting with stakeholders. It’s tempting to keep your head down, but it’s only through ongoing interactions with stakeholders and that the difficult conversation about what happened and how a brand will fix it can be heard, and trust can be rebuilt.
- Clear communication of reasons for betrayal. A company needs to understand why a crisis occurred in order to be able to fix those issues and repair trust. If stakeholders don’t believe a brand understands or is willing to take responsibility for the reasons for a crisis then they won’t have faith in a brand to address those issues going forward.
Case study: In July 2024, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike released a defective software update that caused a global IT outage, impacting sectors such as airlines, hospitals, and banks. CEO George Kurtz promptly addressed the reasons for the issue, clarifying that it was not a security breach but a faulty update. He provided detailed explanations about the cause, the steps taken to resolve the issue, and measures to prevent future occurrences.
Conclusion
Long before the corporation arrived on the scene in the early modern period, trust was something people did with other people. It’s easy in corporate communications to drift into the abstract, but by grounding crisis comms principles in the mechanics of how humans rebuild trust with each other we can arrive at a form of crisis comms that is more effective and ultimately more human.